1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a component reusing system for disassembling a product by a robot or the like into components, and utilizing the disassembled components again as components of new products, a product capable of being easily disassembled, and a disassembling method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, it has been customary to disassemble products manually. More specifically, products have been manually disassembled in most steps except that a dedicated machine or tool is employed in the case of requiring large forces to disassemble the product, as experienced when disassembling, for example, a portion assembled tight by caulking. In other words, the concept of disassembling products into single-level components and reusing them has not yet been fixed in industries. Disassembly of products has been restricted to the case where a taken-out portion can still serve as a resusable unit component (i.e., a product), such as an automobile tire and battery, and it has been few to dissemble products for the purpose of obtaining components (i.e., single-level components) used again to construct a new product. Even when disassembling products into single-level components, the disassembling step has been made as a step necessary for taking out the above-mentioned reusable unit component, or implemented for restoration into materials to utilize a value of the component material itself. Therefore, disassembly of products has been restricted to obtain the selected components or unit components, and other components have been sent to a shredding step for each of products or after rough disassembly of each product. The shredded components are reused as material resources, but those ones which are hard to be reused as material resources are employed as shredder dust for, e.g., filling-up.
In order to disassemble used products and take out components with the view of reusing the components in new products, careful disassembly is required to keep the components undamaged so that quality of the taken-out components is surely comparable to that of new components, and a large amount of cost is also required for, e.g., cleaning and inspection of the taken-out components. In addition, with a recent shortening of the product life cycle, opportunities of allowing the taken-out components to be reused is very few.
Because of the background stated above, disassembly of products with intent to reuse disassembled components in new products, and automation of disassembling steps have not been realized for years for the reason of difficulty in success on a commercial basis. Many methods for disassembling products with intent to utilize disassembled components again as material resources are disclosed in, e.g., Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 7-24437 and No. 6-246256.
For expendable supplies used in office automating machines such as spent toner cartridges, for example, it is conceivable, after toner contained as an expendable in the cartridge has been exhausted, to use their housings and process components again in new products instead of shredding them as mentioned above. This is also desired from the standpoint of protecting the global environment.
Those expendable supplies used in office automating machines have a relatively long product life cycle. A remarkable effect upon protection of resources is expected if a system enabling makers to recover spent commodities through the market and recycle them as new products is established.
With increasing attention focused on environmental problems, as mentioned above, development of technology for recycling (reusing) discarded products has been progressed in recent years. However, a main current tendency resides in crushing products directly, sorting out the crushed products, and reuse them as materials or fuel.
That recycling method is disadvantageous from the standpoint of not only cost but also energy consumption because even those components which can be reused in new products are crushed together. Further, because various kinds of materials are mixed, 100% pure materials cannot be obtained after being sorted out, and the restored materials are poor in quality.
The above problem could be overcome by disassembling products individually, utilizing those components again which are reusable as they are, and disassembling those components, which are reused as materials, to single-level members, followed by crushing them.
Conventional products are designed to have such a structure as meeting demands for easier assembly, lower cost, smaller size, lighter weight, etc. For disassembly, however, conventional products are designed to have such a structure that those components, which are required to be disassembled later in view of maintenance, repair, etc., are detachably fixed using screws.
To solve the problems stated above, several methods have been proposed in the past. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 6-159330 discloses a method of using an elastic member to construct a component for a joint portion, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 7-71425 discloses a method of using a shape memory member, as an engaging member, for easier disassembly.
Even for the products which have a conventional Mscrewing structure to be capable of being disassembled, however, a large amount of cost is required to actually disassemble the products, and disassembling the products for the purpose of recycling has difficulty in succeeding on a business basis.
Also, the above two methods disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publications have drawbacks in points of cost, accuracy and easiness in manufacture, and hence are not yet put into practice for the purpose of recycling.